<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Sleeping Under Strange Skies by formalizing</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27681326">Sleeping Under Strange Skies</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/formalizing/pseuds/formalizing'>formalizing</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e20 Carry On, Post-Finale, Sibling Incest</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 01:02:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,860</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27681326</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/formalizing/pseuds/formalizing</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Whoever said 'life is short' didn't spend it counting the days.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>100</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Sleeping Under Strange Skies</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/BaronSamedi/gifts">BaronSamedi</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Just writing to process it, but I think I can safely blame a conversation with Myri for the direction this took.</p><p>Title and end lyric from "Moonlight Mile" by the Rolling Stones.</p><p>Orginally posted <a href="https://all-these-formalities.tumblr.com/post/635378033120903168">on Tumblr</a>.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Every year, Sam manages to forget how much El Sol tastes like the cheap beer it is. His face screws up in a moue of distaste for a second and he sets the bottle back down on the bartop.</p><p>He hardly ever drinks anymore, at any rate. A glass of wine at holiday dinners, a craft beer or two that he nurses to be polite when he’s at some neighbor’s Superbowl party. He went on more than his fair share of benders after… well, after. Bottle after bottle trying to drown the memory of a funeral pyre, trying to keep his hands busy just to keep himself from eating a bullet, coming up with a dozen different deals and plans, discarding them all because he <em>promised</em>.</p><p>Hard liquor turns his stomach now, sends him spiraling back to when the days and nights would blur with grief. They still do sometimes—especially on days like today—but each passing year anesthetizes the wound a bit more with the promise of new grey hairs or fine lines.</p><p>It’s getting harder to find the right kind of place for this annual memorial. He doesn’t go back to the bunker—the last time he turned the lights out in there was the last time. It was only home because of the people in it. So he drives until he’s across a few state lines, picks the first motel that looks like it’ll have the kind of cheesy décor their childhood was full of. Once he’s checked in, he’ll ask the front desk clerk where the nearest bar with a pool table might be.</p><p>He smiles a bit as he looks around the one he’s found this year—a couple worse-for-wear pool tables scattered around, music blasting so loud it’s giving Sam a headache, peeling fabric on one of the barstools patched with duct tape. There’s some scuffs and dents in the walls from pool cues drawn back too far or maybe a few fist fights that got out of hand.<br/>
<br/>
Not to mention, the bartender’s top is so low-cut that her bra’s covering more of her tits than the shirt is.<br/>
<br/>
Dean would have loved this place.<br/>
<br/>
The couple bottles of El Sol that they managed to find in the back were covered in so much dust, they might be nearly as old as that first bottle of the stuff Dean snuck him on his fifteenth birthday—tradition, he'd called it.<br/>
<br/>
Sam can still remember the way Dean grinned, watching Sam’s face twist much the same way it does when he drinks the stuff today. <em>“Smooth, ain’t it, Sammy?”</em></p><p>He clings to the memory of that grin as he sips at his beer (which he still doesn’t finish even half of) and chats with the bartender—Cindy—tactfully ignoring her little flirtations until she notices the ring on his hand. He even goes over and plays a couple rounds of pool, snakes fifty bucks off some guy who thought the middle-aged guy with the salt and pepper hair and bad back looked like an easy mark.</p><p>He leaves it as a tip for Cindy—he’s long past the days of credit card fraud and hustling pool for gas money, and she’s working two jobs to get by while she takes classes at the local community college, so she could probably use it.</p><p>The end of the night is always the hardest. He doesn’t head back to the motel right away because that means it’s over—he’ll just slip into one of the two queen beds in the room—feeling half empty even with how much space he takes up—and a restless sleep if any at all, waiting for the morning light and the drive back.</p><p>He always makes sure the trip is just a couple days—it’s really not fair to leave his family on their own so he can sink into self-pity much longer than that. And he appreciates that he found a partner who lets him have this part of his life that’s completely separate from her, doesn’t demand to be included or to know every detail. She knows what today is and why it’s important, and she seems content with that. She just kisses his cheek and says ‘see you in a couple days’ as he tosses a duffel that’s damn near as old as he is into the trunk of the car he keeps the plates and insurance up on but never drives other than this trip.</p><p>He likes to think Dean would have liked her.</p><p>Then again, if Dean was still here, she wouldn’t be.</p><p>He usually finds himself driving aimlessly just outside of whatever town he’s in when it’s nearly midnight. He’ll stop somewhere secluded—down one of those little dirt roads that lead to nothing but dead ends or wide open fields. When he’s picked somewhere south for the trip, he’ll get out and sit on the hood to look up at the twinkling stars the way they used to. But it’s a bit too cold for that this year—it is January in the Midwest, after all.</p><p>So instead, he shuffles over to the passenger seat where he feels a little more at home, flicks the radio on low and listens to the heat rumble with the familiar rattle of those Lego pieces lost down the vents so many years ago and kept there through every rebuild. He sits and thinks of his brother the way he tries not to let himself do too often the rest of the year. His smile crinkling the corners of his eyes, the sound of his laugh echoing through the bunker or the softness in the way he’d say Sam’s name when they were alone, the familiar warmth of calloused hands.</p><p>His vision’s a little blurry through the sheen of tears threatening to fall as he glances down at Dean’s watch on his wrist, watches it tick over to a minute past midnight on January 25th.</p><p>“Another one on the books,” he says, to the empty interior of the car. “Just a few more wrinkles and some more white hair you managed to miss out on. Lucky jerk.”</p><p>He drags a hand down his face, wipes at his eyes like there’s anyone around to see him cry.</p><p>“I thought it’d get easier—wife and kid, the house and white picket fence. It should be enough, right? To make me <em>want</em> to be here. And I do, sometimes—for Dean, if nothing else. He’s really something, y’know? You’d… you would have loved him,” Sam thinks of his son with a wistful smile, of the little shit-eating grin he gets that’s so much like his namesake’s. “He’s growing into the name; strong and brave and funny. The other day he cracked this joke that was so—well. What’s a ghost’s favorite dessert?”</p><p>There’s no answer, of course, just a little crackle of the radio because the reception’s not so great anymore.</p><p>“Boo-berry pie,” Sam continues, with a watery laugh. “I swear, the smile on his face as he said it, so proud of the laughs it got…”</p><p>He trails off, listening to the tail-end of whatever song is on the radio just to distract himself from the crushing silence in the car.</p><p>“Some days I think I’m no better for him than dad was for us, y’know? He loved us, and he tried, but he wasn’t really <em>there</em>, after mom. Not really, not in the ways that mattered. And I’d never put Dean through anything like what we had, but… it’s like I’m only halfway here, too; half a father and half a husband, because the rest of me went with you. Even on the best days—even when it’s Christmas morning, or Dean’s first day of school, or it’s summer break and I get to teach him how to fish at that old lake dad took us to a couple times—they’re still just… one day closer to you. Because I thought I wanted this—I <em>did</em> want this, once upon a time—but somewhere along the line, everything I wanted got all tangled up in you, until it was <em>just</em> you that I wanted, and no matter what I do... it’s empty in the middle, now that you’re gone.”</p><p>The wind whistles outside the car, picking up with the heavy snowfall starting to roll in, and Sam watches it swirl for a moment.</p><p>“I still dream about the barn, every now and then. I get to save you—in the good ones, anyway. You don’t say ‘goodbye’, and I get to keep you, and none of the rest ever happens. We’d be in bed right now, probably already asleep after some birthday sex where neither one of us would have to be quiet with the bunker all to ourselves. You’d be an old man with bad joints, popping painkillers like candy every day, same as me. We could complain about the weather, the way the old breaks still hurt when it rains—you’d complain louder than me. And when you tell me how much you love me, I’d get to say it back instead of...”</p><p>Sam leans his head against the cold glass of the passenger side window, presses his thumb into his palm where the memory of that scar still manages to ache as he swallows down the lump in his throat.</p><p>He wonders to himself how many more cold January nights he’ll spend this way before he gets back to the only home he’s ever known, tucked between his big brother’s arms. One? Five? Maybe ten or even, god forbid, another twenty or more, so he’s the only one of his family to be old and white-haired and broken-down at the end.</p><p>He sighs as he looks out at the snow that’s really coming down, now. He’ll need to get moving soon if he doesn’t want to get stuck. Even with tires that hardly hit the road anymore, Baby’s not great in winter conditions.</p><p>Switching back to the driver’s side, he casts one last glance up at the bright, star-filled sky. He’s just in time to see the quick wink of a shooting star streaking across it, and he huffs a laugh.</p><p>“Show-off,” he mutters.</p><p>It’s not Dean—of course it’s not. That’s not how Heaven works. The passage of time has probably felt like nothing at all for him, and he never hears it when Sam talks to him this way, or sobs his name when the memories are too much, or whispers it almost shamefully into the dark at night when he should be asleep beside his wife instead of touching himself to the memory of his brother’s hands. But Sam pulls out of the clearing feeling just a bit lighter nonetheless.</p><p>He turns the radio up as he heads back to the highway, hums along to the Stones song that’s playing with a bittersweet smile. He can almost feel the weight of another set of hands holding his own on the steering wheel.</p><p>
  <em>“I am just living to be lying by your side… but I'm just about a moonlight mile on down the road.”</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>